Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United
Alex Ferguson
Description
What does it take to lead a team to world-class success over a sustained period of time?
Sir Alex Ferguson is one of the few leaders who truly knows. In his 38 years in management, Sir Alex won an astonishing 49 trophies and helped grow Manchester United into one of the biggest commercial brands in the world.
In this inspirational and straight-talking book, Sir Alex reveals the secrets behind his record-breaking career.
Leading is structured around the key skills that Sir Alex values most highly. It includes subjects we immediately associate with his managerial style: Discipline, Control, Teamwork and Motivation. But it also addresses subjects that are less obvious but no less important when seeking success: Delegation, Data Analysis and Dealing with Failure.
Key words: Leadership, team building
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My Notes
Introduction
The most important activity is to inspire a group of people to perform at their very best.
Chapter 1: Becoming yourself
Listening, watching, reading
How does someone become their true self?
If you are leading people, it helps to have a sense of who they are – the circumstances in which they were raised, the actions that will draw out the best in them. And the remarks that will cause them to be spooked. The only way to figure this out is by two underrated activities: listening and watching.
There is a reason that god gave us two ears, two eyes and one mouth. It’s so you can listen and watch twice as much as you talk. Best of all, listening costs you nothing.
Look people in the eye, block out the rest of the world and show great interest in the speaker.
Listening is like enrolling in a continuous lifelong free education, with the added benefit that there are no examinations and you can always discard useless comments.
I would make it a practice to listen intently to how the players would predict the probable line-up of our opponents.
Soak up everything your mentor has to say.
Never lose you temper immediately. Wait until Monday until it has blown over.
Watching is another under rated skill and it again costs you nothing. For me there are two forms of observation: the first is on the detail and the second is on the big picture.
I shouldn’t be conducting training sessions but, instead, should be on the sidelines watching and supervising. You can see a lot more when you are not in the thick of things. It was the most important decision I ever made about the way I managed and led. When you are a step removed from the fray, you see things that come as surprises – and it is important to allow yourself to be surprised.
I was certainly interested in what other people had to say, but I always wanted to watch with my own eyes without having my judgement swayed by the filters of others.
Take your time before making decisions.
It takes courage to say, ‘let me think about it’.
As you get older you temper your enthusiasm with experience.
Watching others, listening to their advice and reading about people are three of the best things I ever did.
Chapter 2: Recognising hunger
Discipline, work rate, drive, conviction
Let the punishment fit the crime.
In the long run, principles are just more important that expediency.
If you can assemble a team of 11 talented players who concentrate intently during training sessions, take care of their diet and bodies, get enough sleep and who show up on time, then you are almost halfway to winning a trophy.
It’s important to grind out the unglamorous 1-0 results.
If I had to choose between someone who had great talent but was short on grit and desire, and another player who was good but had great determination and drive, I would always prefer the latter.
I’ve long had a soft spot for people from a working-class background, because I think it prepares them for the hardness of life.
One players drive can have an enormous effect on a team – a winning drive is like a magical potion that can spread from one person to another.
You usually cannot install an edge in a player if somehow or other he didn’t acquire it before he was a teenager.
I was just able to keep reinforcing the ideology that no club was bigger than united – no matter whether their owner controlled all the oil in the Persian gulf, or every coal mine in Russia.
Chapter 3: Assembling the pieces
Organisation, preparation, pipeline
Part of the pursuit of excellence involves eliminating as many surprises as possible.
Part of my job was to impart in my players a sense of what was possible.
Part of a leader’s job is to eliminate as many risks as possible.
At United we always had to be thinking about the composition of the team a few seasons ahead. So, we had to have a conveyor belt of talent. Every game requires 11 starting players and seven substitutes. Our whole organisation was designed to produce them. I always wanted to know about what the pipeline of players looked like for the team we would select three years into the future. It is so much easier to produce a consistent level of high performance when you nourish youngsters, help them develop and provide a pathway to success.
Youngsters can inject a fantastic spirit in an organisation and a youngster never forgets the person or organisation that gave him his first big chance.
Work hard to blood youngsters.
There is no end to the benefits of long-term investment in people and through training in the ways of the organisation.
Great teamwork comes from deep familiarity and developing close bonds with others.
Chapter 4: Engaging others
Teamwork, captains
Getting an organisation into balance doesn’t occur once. It requires perpetual work. I felt I was always re-tuning things – although once in a while we had to do more than just an oil change, we needed to change with the times.
Every member of a team has got to understand that they are part of a jigsaw puzzle. If you move one piece, the picture doesn’t look right. Each player has to understand the qualities and strengths of their team-mates.
In football, eight players, not 11, win games, because everybody has off days and it’s almost impossible to make 11 people play to perfection simultaneously.
You don’t have to love your players or your management team, but you do need to respect their abilities.
I always felt it was important to be careful about the way a newcomer was threaded into the side.
The older players aren’t competing against the youngsters as much as they are contending with the comparisons with their younger selves.
The captain is the person responsible for making sure the agenda of the organisation is pursued.
The captain’s top three qualities;
Has to have a desire to lead on the field.
The captain needed to be someone who I could trust to convey my desires.
The other players would respect as a leader and follow their instructions.
Captains also needed to be capable of adapting to changing circumstances.
I frequently talked to the captains and other senior players about how we might approach an opponent.
Chapter 5: Setting standards
Excellence, inspiring, complacency
Part of the way you develop excellence in an organisation is to be careful about the way you define success.
It was much easier to say, ‘at United we expect to Win every game’, because it conveyed the spirit of the club. Making sure everyone understood that we expected to triumph in every game set an agenda of excellence and allowed me to regularly administer booster shots of intensity.
You have to set up each individual for success, which requires considered thought.
You don’t get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance.
Much of leadership is about extracting the extra five per cent of performance that individuals did not know they possessed.
Some managers try and be popular with players and become one of the boys. It never works. As a leader you don’t have to be loved, though it is useful, on occasion, to be feared. But, most of all, you need to be respected. A leader is not one of the boys. It is vital to keep some sort of distance.
The first 10-12 years of anyone’s life have a profound influence on the way they act as adults.
…The lesson I absorbed was that even if I said nothing during the practice (and I rarely said much), my physical presence was a more important motivational tool than I had realised.
A strong personality is an expression of inner strength and fortitude.
A leader needs to put himself in the shoes of the listener.
Do the little things to help players. This will instil a sense of loyalty. It will also demonstrate a sense of loyalty and help the player to lift their game. They will then give the extra five per cent. I gradually came to understand this back-door route to inspiring people. Just help them.
Chapter 6: Measuring people
Job hunting, networking, firing
When I interview someone, I want to know how ambitious they are.
I want to measure the level of their commitment. I always look for enthusiasm, for a positive attitude, for eye contact and personal courage.
The gimmicks don’t change the message. If you have decided to get rid of someone, nothing beats honesty.
Chapter 7: Focus
Time, distractions, failing, criticism
The experience of defeat, or more particularly the manner in which a leader reacts to it, is an essential part of what makes a winner.
I always felt our defeats, or disappointing results, were caused by what we failed to do rather than what our opponents did. I found it a healthy approach to disappointments in that manner because it meant we were in control and could improve.
I always thought my role was to act as a player’s heat deflector in a moment of crisis.
Every leader needs an ally in the company.
Chapter 8: Owning the message
Speaking, writing, answering
Managers have to find a way to talk to their bosses, regardless of their differences in character; otherwise it will end miserably.
The first thing I would do every day was talk to my coaching staff at the training ground and set out my key priorities for the day.
If you have command and control of your subject, you don’t need notes. No player is going to believe that someone is in control of his material, or is an authority on a subject, if he has to keep resorting to notes.
Andrea Bocelli was trying to obtain the same things from his orchestra as I was doing at United: control, harmony, tempo, timing, rhythm.
You need to know what you want to say; you have to contemplate how you are going to deliver the message; and you have to maintain control over the audience. If someone has belief, they can find the words to express it. Plan what you want to say, have a mental roadmap, for the points I want to emphasise and then try to maintain my train of thought.
Chapter 9: Leading not managing
Owners, control, delegation, decision-making
I quickly gained an appreciation for how important it is to understand the person, or people, to whom you have to report and are accountable.
I cannot say enough about the benefits of a long-term, stable ownership that’s prepared to make the necessary investments to create a vibrant organisation.
Everything hinges on performance of individuals and the random influences of emotion, chance and injury.
There’s nothing more reassuring for a manager that to feel that he has the support of his boss.
The greatest gift a leader can give is confidence in the player’s capabilities.
A manager wants four things from an owner;
No meddling
Money when it is needed
Support
Fair compensation
Most important, a manager needs control to shape his own destiny and that of his organisation.
If I were an aspiring football manager, or dreamed about running a big company, I’d take a very careful look at the composition of the ownership before accepting any job.
The skipper of the ship incapable of controlling its course, or altering its speed, is not going to arrive safely in port.
A leader who seeks control is very different from one who craves power.
It’s far better to give people a belief in themselves, and faith in the direction of their organisation, than to rule like Attila the Hun.
I was the puppet master, not the control freak.
I slowly came to understand that my job was different. It was set to very high standards. It was to help everyone else believe that they could do things they didn’t think they were capable of. It was to chart a course that had not been pursued before. It was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible. That’s the difference between leadership and management.
On the whole, it is better to explain to the people around you that you care about little details, but that it’s their job to attend to them.
Coach said to the captain: “Tommy take them home, son. You know what to do”. That one sentence said everything about Shankly’s style of leadership.
You have to make decisions with the information at your disposal, rather than what you wish you might have.
I tried not to waste too much energy thinking about why, or how, other managers made decisions.
Chapter 10: The bottom line
Buying, frugality, compensation, negotiation, brokers
Any leader is a salesman – he has to sell to the inside of his organisation and the outside. Anyone who aspires to be a great leader needs to excel at selling his ideas and aspirations to others. Sometimes you have to persuade people to do things they don’t want to do, or to sell them on the idea that they can achieve something they had not dreamed about.
It requires real talent to see something that is unpolished and imagine it as a shiny gem that fits within a tiara.
…He taught me to identify the decision-makers who influence any sale.
Make all players feel like you really care.
You have to go and hunt for talent.
The importance of developing your own pipeline of talented youngsters.
Our emphasis on youth produced two things: the pipeline of talent for the first team, and a very healthy side-line business.
Build, rather than buy.
I just don’t think you can buy success. You have to earn it.
A lot of people either feel, or want to feel, that they are more valuable than anyone else.
I always tried to tell myself that it wasn’t the end of the world if we failed in a particular negotiation and that our success was not going to hinge on the arrival of one player. If you need one person to change your destiny, then you have not built a very solid organisation.
Chapter 11: Business development
Innovation, data overload, confidentially
Everyone is looking for an edge that will make them better than their opponents. As soon as you have fastened on that advantage, there’s always a desire to keep it under close wraps.
The evidence was always right in front of me: not on a screen, but on the football pitch. I always glanced at the data, but it almost never told me anything I hadn’t already concluded.
…new ways to measure things…
Information can be classed into two buckets: what I was willing to disclose and nuggets I wouldn’t tell my grandmother.
One mark of a leader is his willingness to share information. A great leader is happy to share his knowledge.
You have to consider the human element of life and the way that circumstance and chance can upset everything – even the most accurate and clearly reported data. Knowing the heart rate of a player and doing all the video analysis in the world of his opposite number isn’t going to help you if he loses control and gets sent off in the first minute.
There is no benefit to be gained by telegraphing your moves or declaring your intentions to competitors.
Stealth and secrecy are two valuable weapons for any organisation.
You only need six people to carry your coffin.
Chapter 12: The relevance of others
Rivalries, global markets
You cannot define yourself by your rivals and competitors or change your strategy and approach because of something they do.
Chapter 13: Transitions
Arriving, leaving, fresh challenges
When a new leader steps in…he does not change the people who run all the departments, but he does set-out his own agenda and make his priorities clear.
I’d wager that no winning organisation has ever been built in the first 100 days. If you want to build a winning organisation, you have to be prepared to carry on building every day. You never stop building – if you do, you stagnate.
There is no point suddenly changing routines that players are comfortable with. It is counterproductive, saps morale and immediately provokes players to question the new motives. A leader that arrives in a new setting, or inherits a big role, needs to curb the impulse to display his manhood.
Actions speak much louder than words.
Don’t wait too long to reshape the team.
In my heart I knew that I would never be able to turn some of the players into the sort of performers required to consistently win trophies. I gave some of them too much benefit of the doubt, and had I moved a bit more quickly, I suspect we would have become a winning club a couple of years earlier.
All I sought was performance, and as long as they performed, they are going to be part of the journey ahead.
If you get hit by a bus, who takes your place?
All of us knew the history of the club and the benefits that come from stable leadership.
Keep to your plan. Don’t be overcome by primal instincts.
After retirement…Sharing stories with Mikael and Bobby reminds me of what I miss about my old life. It isn’t the open topped bus tours, the pleasure of spotting a youngster with great talent or the thrill of a closely fought game. Rather, it is all those shared experiences and the camaraderie that emerges between people who live and work together for a long time. I miss talking to our kit man every day and giving stick to our grounds man. But most of all I miss being around the company of young people eager to take on impossible challenges – whether they were the players or the eager crew of video analysts.
Epilogue
AF’s top traits he looks for in a person
On time
Compassionate
Put others first
Humble
Hard working
Modest
Numbers man
Kind
Polite
The great leader:
Embrace the unthinkable
Unshakable confidence in convictions
Clear sense of ultimate goal and communicate that with others
Strip things down to the essence – simplify
Keep followers’ eyes on two to three objectives
Patience
Deal with employees
Trust the judgement of others
Unafraid of delegating authority
Success comes from making a few large decisions correctly rather than trying to be involved in lots of small choices
Trust in others they can do things well
Derives success from the organisation rather than his own achievements
Will treat the organisation’s money as if it were his own
Will not demand outlandish compensation
Will have no need to be in the spotlight
Will not show anxiety when the chips are down
Humility
If he does his job well, people will see him as tough but fair
The great leader has two other traits that set him apart.
Obsession – Obsession with their work and an inexhaustible thirst for knowledge
Capacity for dealing with people. The great leader will be able to extract extraordinary levels of performance and commitment from their employees and colleagues.
Understanding what is possible, setting realistic expectations and communicating them clearly enough to bring a team along with you, especially in a setting where everyone wants quick results, is one of the hardest leadership skills.
Sir Alex’s directions tended to be short and concise because barely anyone, whether they work in a hospital or steel mill or a part of a boy-scout troop, can’t remember more than three instructions. Long winded monologues do not strike the target in the way that brief talks relaying precise and concise instructions do.
A new manager is just a custodian, charged with leaving the organisation in a better condition than it was when they arrived.
Respect was all he sought because, once earned it makes it much easier for a leader to control an organisation and bend it to his will.
One of the keys to an enduring organisation is to build from within, by helping youngsters gain their footing and become successful. This in-house development programme requires great patience, and takes a long time, but it is a process that breeds the sorts of bonds that only years of shared experiences can provide – stability, familiarity, trust and eventually, life-long loyalty.
Great leaders are competing – not with others – but with the idea of perfection itself. It does not matter how many sales records that have broken, how many competitors they have extinguished, or how many breakthrough products they have introduced – a greater, more perfect version of their success always beckons.
A great leader possesses an unusual and essential characteristic – he will think and operate like an owner.
“You cannot lead by following others.”
